All is set for the panel discussion on the life and legacy of the late writer Ama Ata Aidoo. Facilitated by the Toyin Falola Interviews and Pan African Writers Association (PAWA), the panel, which will be held on zoom platform, will bring together, literature enthusiasts, scholars, and creatives to honour the exceptional contributions of Ama Ata Aidoo to African literature.
The discussants will interrogate how Aidoo’s extraordinary life and legacy, and the lasting impact she has had on the literary world. The event will provide opportunity for participants to gain insights into Aidoo’s unique perspective, creative process, and political activism.
The panelists will shed light on Aidoo’s works, her cultural influence, and the ways in which she shaped African literature. One of the panelists is Ashraf Aboul-Yazid. The 63-year-old culture journalist has been on the beat for more than 35 years.
He has authored and translated 42 books. An anthology of his poetry books, A Street in Cairo, The Memory of Butterflies, The Memory of Silence, and The Whisper of the Sea and The Shells, has been published in English, Sindhi, German, Russian, Persian, Turkish and Spanish. He is the President, Asia Journalist Association and Editor in Chief, The Silk Road Literature Series. Some of his awards include: Grand Manhae Prize in Literature, Korea (2014), Arab Journalism Award in Culture, UAE (2015), The Gold Medal in LIFFT Eurasian Literary Festival, Turkey (2021) and Sawiris Cultural Award, Children Literature, Egypt (2023).
Equally primed for the panel is Dr. Akwasi Aidoo, a creative writer. He is currently a Senior Fellow at Humanity United, and was the founding Executive Director of TrustAfrica – a foundation dedicated to promoting equitable development, social justice, movement building and democracy in Africa.
Aidoo currently serves on the Boards of several international organisations including Human Rights Watch, International Development Research Centre, and the Centre on African Philanthropy and Social Investment at Wits Business School at the University of Witwatersrand in South Africa.
In the 1970s and 1980s, Dr. Aidoo taught at universities in Ghana, Tanzania, and the United States. He was educated in Ghana and the United States and received a Doctor of Philosophy degree in medical sociology from the University of Connecticut in 1985.
Also set to interrogate the legacy of the late Ghanaian writer is Prof. Peter Amuka. A Kenyan, Amuka is Professor of Comparative Literature. He holds a PhD in Comparative Literature from the University of California, Los Angeles, MA and BA degrees in Literature from University of Nairobi. He was a Research Fellow/Lecturer at the Institute of African Studies until 1987 when he moved to Moi University.
Amuka, a Professor of Comparative Literature at Kibabii University in Bungoma, Kenya, has over 40 publications comprising book reviews, feature articles, critical essays and book chapters in African oral and written literatures and Wanjira and her Hitlers, short fiction.
Equally expected for the literary exploration and cross fire is the Ghanaian diplomat and internationally known poet, Abena P. A. Busia, who is currently serving as her country’s Ambassador to Brazil.
Busia is a Professor Emerita, having served 40 years in the Departments of English and Women’s & Gender Studies and Comparative Literature at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey.
She has received Fellowships and awards from numerous organisations, including the Rockefeller, Fulbright and Ford Foundations, and the Rutgers University President’s Award for Distinguished Public Service.
She has published widely, lectured extensively, and taught workshops and masterclasses on curriculum transformation, around the world, in the areas of gender, race, and multi-cultural studies.
She is a founding Board member of several international organisations including, the Busia Foundation for which she serves as International Liaison Officer, the African Women’s Development Fund (AWDF) for which she served as the founding Programme Committee Chair and AWD Fund-USA for which she served as Executive Chair.
She is also one of the three Project co-directors and series editors of the award winning four volume Women Writing Africa project, published by the Feminist Press 2002-2008.
Busia has given numerous interviews and poetry readings on radio, performed and read at conferences, universities, churches and poetry and Jazz festivals around Europe, North America, and West Africa, including the celebrated New Orleans Jazz Festival and the welcoming ceremonies for Nelson Mandela on the steps of City Hall, Los Angeles.
First published by the late Chinua Achebe, her poetry has appeared in various anthologies and magazines on three continents, in West Africa, North America, and Europe.
As a board member of the Women’s Learning Partnership, a South-South network of women’s organizations dedicated to women’s leadership and empowerment, she is the curator of “Lifelines: The Poetry of Human Rights” presenting readings yearly at the UN Commission on the Status of Women and other NGO fora.
Also listed is Bisi Adjapon, author of the critically acclaimed novels, Daughter in Exile (Harper Collins, 2023) and The Teller of Secrets (Harper Collins, 2021),
The latter, her debut, has been named a best book by The American Library Association, Washington Post, Boston Globe, Globe and Mail (Canada), Pop Sugar, Essence, and Ms Magazine.
The short story version, Of Women and Frogs, was nominated for the Caine Prize. Her second novel, Daughter in Exile, is a New Yorker Magazine and Amazon Editors’ Best Book, and has received starred reviews from many publications including Publishers Weekly, American Library Association’s Booklist, Library Journal, Book Browse, and World Literature Today. It has also been listed a must-read by The Root and Essence.
Adjapon’s writings have appeared in journals and newspapers including The Guardian, McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern, The Sun Magazine, Aljazeera, New York Times, Washington Times and Brittle Paper.
A former International Affairs Specialist for the US Foreign Agricultural Service, she won the Civil Rights Award for Human Relations.
As an educator, she won An Excellence in Teaching Award in Fairfax County, Virginia. For four years, she was Artistic Director of the Young Shakespeare Company in Washington. Now she is a fulltime writer, dividing her time between the United States and Ghana.
In addition to the panel discussion, the event will feature a captivating performance by Oswald Okaitei, a talented artist whose work resonates with Aidoo’s themes and artistic vision. His performance will add a unique dimension to the event, showcasing the profound influence that Aidoo’s works have had on various art forms.
Okaitei is a young multi-award winning Ghanaian poet, spoken word artiste, playwright, Storyteller and a ‘creative artpreneur’. He has been featured on many national and international platforms and shared stage with poetry/spoken word legends as Muta Baruka, Prof. Atukwei Okai, Prof. Kofi Anyidoho, Rocky Dawuni among others.
Oswald represented Ghana at the 2016 Storymoja Festival in Nairobi, Kenya and at the Babishai Poetry Festival in Kampala, Uganda in 2015 and 2016 as a Resource Person and an Artiste.
In 2016, he was adjudged the Pan-African Poet/Spoken word artiste in Ghana. Other awards received by Okaitei include, World Poetry Empowered Poet 2013 & World Poetry Theatre Ambassador award 2014 (by the World Poetry & Canada International);and the Pentasi B. Inspirational Poet Award 2015 (by Pentasi B. World Poetry Friendship International in Philippines). Oswald Okaitei is currently the Organising Secretary of the Ghana Association of Writers.
The late Ama Ata Aidoo was born March 23, 1942. The Ghana-born writer and academic died on May 31, 2023. Aidoo attended Wesley Girls’ Senior High School in Cape Coast. After high school, she enrolled in 1961 at the University of Ghana, Legon, where she obtained the degree of Bachelor of Arts in English and wrote her first play, The Dilemma of a Ghost, in 1964. The play was published by Longman the following year, making Aidoo the first published female African dramatist. Additionally, Aidoo’s novel Changes earned her the prestigious Commonwealth Writers’ Prize in 1992.
After graduating, Aidoo held a fellowship in creative writing at Stanford University in California before returning to Ghana in 1969 to teach English at the University of Ghana. She served as a research fellow at the Institute of African Studies there and as a lecturer in English at the University of Cape Coast, where she eventually rose to the position of professor.
Aidoo was appointed Minister of Education under the Provisional National Defence Council in 1982. She resigned after 18 months, realising that she would be unable to achieve her aim of making education in Ghana freely accessible to all.
She has portrayed the role of African women in contemporary society. She has opined that the idea of nationalism has been deployed by recent leaders as a means of keeping people oppressed.
She held strong Pan-Africanist views on the necessity of unity among African countries and was outspoken about the centuries of exploitation of the Africa’s resources and peoples.
Aidoo received a Fulbright Scholarship award in 1988, was writer-in-residence at the University of Richmond, Virginia in 1989, and taught various English courses at Hamilton College in Clinton New York in the early mid-1990s.
In 1991, she and African-American poet Jayne Cortez established and co-chaired the Organization of Women Writers of Africa (OWWA) and board members of OWWA have included J. E. Franklin, Cheryll Y. Greene, Rashidah Ismaili, Louise Meriwether, Maya Angelou, Rosamond S. King, Margaret Busby, Gabrielle Civil, Alexis De Veaux, LaTasha N. Diggs, Zetta Elliott, Donette Francis, Paula Giddings, Renée Larrier, Tess Onwueme, Coumba Touré, Maryse Condé, Nancy Morejón, and Sapphire.
In 2000, Aidoo founded the Mbaasem Foundation, a non-governmental organization based in Ghana with a mission “to support the development and sustainability of African women writers and their artistic output”, which she ran together with her daughter, Kinna Likimani, and a board of management.
Praising her as “an outstanding writer, advocate for women’s cause, the cause of Africans and the progressive people around the world”, President Nana Akufo-Addo announced that she would be given a state funeral, with funeral rites held from July 13 to 16.The time for the literary event is 4.00pm in Ghana while Nigeria is 5.00pm.
